It's only technically "prohibited" by US law primarily though ... and, to be quite blunt, China doesn't have a good track record in the technology sphere with respecting our laws (e.g. US patent and copyright violations by Chinese companies). Still, I wonder how long it would take The Chinese government to get upset if the US decided to just turn a blind eye towards the piracy of their copyrighted works and US companies violating patents filed with their government (or whatever the equivalent to a patent is in China).

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Yeah, that's a big deal with the whole Qualcomm buying NXP deal. Everyone in the world approved it except China, apparently in retaliation to some tariff stuff. So Q paid a $2B breakup fee to NXP, and spent something like $24B buying back stock. So Trump gets China to say, OK, they'll approve it, Q is like, "way too late, not gonna happen," and now this lady gets arrested as Trump and Xi are meeting.

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Yeah, that's a big deal with the whole Qualcomm buying NXP deal. Everyone in the world approved it except China, apparently in retaliation to some tariff stuff. So Q paid a $2B breakup fee to NXP, and spent something like $24B buying back stock. So Trump gets China to say, OK, they'll approve it, Q is like, "way too late, not gonna happen," and now this lady gets arrested as Trump and Xi are meeting.

There are words to describe this, and they are not nice.

Ya, even if only the best intentions towards "establishing Justice" were the underlying motivation for her arrest, I really don't see anything positive coming out of any of this in the big picture. I get the feeling that the best we can hope for is that the whole matter resolves itself quickly in such a way that it is on the level of a simple misunderstanding and is just as readily overlooked as such.
Edited Dec 8, 2018 at 00:27 UTC

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Chinese government is already threatening Canada for arresting her. People like this exist in a sphere of wealth and influence that most people cannot even fathom. Apparently owns 2 houses in Vancouver, both of course in very upscale areas. I wonder, if the Chinese do enact sanctions, will Walmart sue the US and Canadian government? They would likely have the most to lose from sanctions because most of what they pedal is chinese made substandard crap.

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Chinese government is already threatening Canada for arresting her. People like this exist in a sphere of wealth and influence that most people cannot even fathom. Apparently owns 2 houses in Vancouver, both of course in very upscale areas. I wonder, if the Chinese do enact sanctions, will Walmart sue the US and Canadian government? They would likely have the most to lose from sanctions because most of what they pedal is chinese made substandard crap.

sue for what? enforcing the law on someone who makes things that you choose to sell? no legal leg to stand on for any sort of payout or lawsuit. any judge would say it was their choice to do business with this person, and it isn't the fault of any government that this may affect your business. PLus Walmart pushed most manufacturing to china in the first place on their own.

Amazon would probably be hit just as hard though, they sell a lot of shady chinese stuff too.

And a Chinese court granted an injunction against Apple in favor of Qualcomm, saying Apple violated Qualcomm's patents - the court stating that this bans the import and sale of nearly all iPhone models in China.

I can totally believe that this is Chinese retaliation against the US detention of a personal friend of the Chinese president.

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Chinese government is already threatening Canada for arresting her. People like this exist in a sphere of wealth and influence that most people cannot even fathom. Apparently owns 2 houses in Vancouver, both of course in very upscale areas. I wonder, if the Chinese do enact sanctions, will Walmart sue the US and Canadian government? They would likely have the most to lose from sanctions because most of what they pedal is chinese made substandard crap.

sue for what? enforcing the law on someone who makes things that you choose to sell? no legal leg to stand on for any sort of payout or lawsuit. any judge would say it was their choice to do business with this person, and it isn't the fault of any government that this may affect your business. PLus Walmart pushed most manufacturing to china in the first place on their own.

Amazon would probably be hit just as hard though, they sell a lot of shady chinese stuff too.

If I had to guess, Walmart would claim "unfair trade practices" or something; I'm sure they could find a district court to file it in that would be more prone to be sympathetic to their argument (whatever it would be).

That aside, I don't think someone like Walmart or Amazon would even have to sue. They would just have to tell it like it is: lower and middle class consumers are going to see notable prices increases all these goods which will threaten to completely undo any economic gains we've made to date. After that it'd just about be political suicide to allow such sanctions/tariffs to continue (assuming they were to be put in place in the first place).

As far as political suicide, the present issues with Mr. Tariff puts the lie to that.

Well if they find the right district court they could get certainly a positive response and be able to go ahead and sue anyway. Plus, even that Wikipedia article cites multiple examples where the US government automatically waives its immunity to be sued (e.g. actions taken in bad faith).

As far as "political suicide" though, I was thinking a little more along the lines of members of Congress getting pressure to assert their authority on certain matters to affect change rather than any of the politically undead in the executive branch.